Modern inventory systems, such as those in mail order warehouses, supply chain distribution centers, airport luggage systems, and custom-order manufacturing facilities, face significant challenges in responding to requests for inventory items. As inventory systems grow and become increasingly automated, the challenges of maintaining efficient throughput and completing a large number of packing, storing, sorting, retrieving, and other inventory-related tasks become non-trivial. In inventory systems tasked with responding to large numbers of diverse inventory requests, inefficient utilization of system resources, including space, equipment, and manpower, can result in lower throughput, unacceptably long response times, an ever-increasing backlog of unfinished tasks, and, in general, poor system performance. As such inventory systems grow, the need for routine cleaning and maintenance grow with them. However, performing such tasks in a large inventory system becomes more challenging as the size and complexity of inventory systems increase. At the same time, it becomes more expensive and therefore difficult to justify system downtime for cleaning and maintenance tasks as inventory system throughputs increase.